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Abstract:

Many Soviet historians defended their homeland with weapons in their hands during the Great Patriotic War. Some of them wrote poems that reflected what they saw and experienced in the war. These poems, not intended by the authors for publication and not claiming professionalism, are a valuable source for studying the anthropology of war. They show a person at war, their self-awareness and moral foundations of personality. The lines of the poems also reflect the emotional and socio-political background of the era. The subjectivity of sources of this kind does not reduce the objectivity of the events reflected in them that worried historians as professionals and citizens of their country. The poems of three Soviet historians, practically the same age — the Leningrad orientalist I.M. Dyakonov, Kiev resident L.E. Kertman and Muscovite L.N. Pushkarev — which were written by them during the war, are analyzed. The problems posed in them — philosophical, moral and socio-historical — allowed to better present the spiritual world of Soviet historians, to show it in a personal dimension.

Keywords: I.M. Dyakonov, L.E. Kertman, L.N. Pushkarev, front-line poetry, anthropology of war, self-awareness of historians.